410 THE PRAIBIE CHICKEN, OR SHARPTAILED GROUSE. 



" the chickens are going into the bush," i. e., leaving the open timber 

 and going into the dense fir coverts, the hearers make ready for a 

 severe storm. 



Like most of the grouse family, this in winter spends the night in 

 a snow-drift. Out on the plains the wind has pounded the snow into 

 drifts of ice-like hardness, but in the bush it continues soft (this 

 very softness affords another security to the chickens, through its 

 causing the wolves and foxes to quit the bush for the winter though, 

 they live there by preference the rest of the year.) In the evening 

 the chickens fly down either headlong into a drift, or run a little 

 then dive. Each makes his own hole. They generally go down six 

 inches or so, and then along about a foot. By morning their breath 

 has formed a solid wall in front of them, so they invariably go out 

 at one side. In Ontario, the non-conductive power of snow is not as 

 likely to be manifested as here, so to illustrate : For weeks, the 

 thermometer being at 20 below zero F.) six inches of snow on one- 

 quarter inch of ice kept the water beneath above 32° F. Without 

 the snow the same ice increased in a day to a thickness of two- 

 inches. Likewise, under 10 inches of snow the ground continued 

 unfrozen after the thermometer had for a month ranged from zero to 

 40 below. Thus we can readily understand that under six inches of 

 snow and one inch of feathers the chickens do not mind even 50 

 below zero. The great disadvantage of the snowbed is that they are 

 so liable to become the prey of foxes, etc., whose sagacious nostrils 

 indicate the very spot beneath which the bird is sleeping I am 

 almost inclined to think thac this is the only way in which a fox has 

 a chance of securing an old chicken, so wary are they at all times.. 

 As the winter wanes it is not uncommon for the land to be visited 

 by a fall of snowy sleet; this drives the chickens at once into the 

 snow drifts, and as the sleet freezes it imprisons them and in this 

 way very many perish. In the spring ^the melting snows leave them 

 exposed, but they are now little else than bones and feathers. There 

 is little else to note about the bush or winter half of their lives. By 

 spring, many of them, by continually pulling off frozen browse, have- 

 so worn their bills that, when closed, there is a large opening right 

 through near the end. As the winter wanes, with their numbers 

 considerably reduced, but with the fittest ones surviving they once 

 more spi'ead over the prairies, at first, in flocks, but soon to scatter 

 and enter on their duties of reproduction. 



